‘In my day, the kingdom was as good and as full as an egg.’ So the late-14th-century knight Philippe de Mézières expressed his longing for the old days: ‘Things have changed a lot I feel’, he mourned, plaintively. It is an odd image, but a very recognisable sentiment; nostalgia is a way of responding to change and perceived decline, which resonates across the centuries. It is an emotion with a universal quality, but it is also one which peaks in periods of extreme instability. Profound change seems often to bring a wave of nostalgia, and so it was in the 14th century.
